9th Funda Mzantsi National Championship

hosted by the National Library of South Africa, in collaboration with the Department of Correctional Services and George Municipality. This competition is one of the fastest growing pilot projects in South Africa that promotes a culture of reading amongst South Africans. The annual event attracted more than 94 book clubs from correctional services, high schools, and tertiary institutions as well as community book clubs. The competition's four categories were Spelling bee, Book review, Reading and Debate in all eleven official languages and book clubs were very excited to hold a spelling bee in their very own indigenous languages. The programme is trying its level best to be inclusive as this year they also gave disabled people the opportunity to take part for the very first time.

The Director of “The Centre for the Book” and manager of the project, Mr. Mandla Mona, thanked all participants: “I would like to thank you for your participation, as you can see that we have all nine provinces with us here, as we are still growing this initiative. We are so pleased as Centre for the Book for what we had this year.” According to the National Librarian and CEO, Prof MD Rocky Ralebipi-Simela. Fundamzantsi Initiative reading stats show that there is a great improvement in reading in South Africa. Executive Director of Core Programmes, Dr Maisela Edward Maepa gave a very powerful message during the closing ceremony about the initiative and he announced that preparations for the 10th Funda Mzantsi National Chapionaship (Championship)will start as soon as from December 2018 to ensure that everything will go smooth as the initiative will be celebrating a decade.